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The American Academy of Poditicae and Sociae Science. 

No. 282. 


Issued Fortnightly. July 24, 1900. 


Natural Rights. 


BY 

Justice A. Incus Clark, 

Hobart, Tasmania. 


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THE ACADEMY AND ITS WORK. 

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NATURAL RIGHTS. 


Xil. 



, vA , - t 


NATURAI, RIGHTS. 

The doctrine of natural rights has a history which may 
be traced to the speculations of Greek philosophers and 
Sophists who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries before 
Christ; but the first deliberate adoption of it as the basis of 
a political organization of human society is found in the 
Declaration of Rights which was made and published by 
the representatives of the people of Virginia, assembled in 
convention on the twelfth day of June, 1776. This docu¬ 
ment was followed, on the fourth day of July, in the same 
year, by the Declaration of Independence by the United 
States of America, in which the assertions of the Virginian 
Declaration that all men possess certain inherent rights, and 
that government is or ought to be instituted for the common 
benefit, protection and security of the people, nation or com¬ 
munity in respect of which it is established, are substantially 
repeated; and in the year 1789 a Declaration of the Rights of 
Man was adopted and promulgated by the National Assembly 
of France. ^ From that time forward the doctrine has been 
vigorously and persistently attacked by a succession of 
writers in England, France and Germany with such appar- 
rently damaging effect that Mr. Ritchie tells us in the preface 
to his elaborate contribution to the attempted demolition of 
the heresy, that when he commenced his labors in that 
direction he feared that he might be employed in slaying 
the already slain. But he adds that subsequent experience 
convinced him that the theory was still, in a sense, alive, 
or at least capable of mischief. Apparently in the judg¬ 
ment of Mr. Ritchie, the doctrine of natural rights has pro¬ 
duced much mischief in the past, but a patient examination 
of it, as presented to us in the three documents I have men¬ 
tioned, may convince us that the evil results which he would 
trace to its influence are not more justly attributable to it 

[212] 


Naturai, Rights. 


37 


than the crimes and follies which have been committed in 
the name of the Christian religion are attributable to the 
teachings of Christ as they are recorded in the New Testa¬ 
ment. The earliest assailants of the doctrine in England, 
after it had found a place in the three documents which I 
have mentioned, were Bentham and Burke, the first of whom 
submitted it to an animated but strictly critical analysis from 
the point of view of the philosophical jurist in his treatise 
on the Principles of Eegislation; while the second attacked it 
in his Reflections on the French Revolution with the vehe¬ 
ment and denunciatory eloquence of a powerful orator and 
thinker whose vision was distorted by his anger at the pro¬ 
gress of a revolution that ran counter to all his political 
sentiments and prejudices. 

Bentham asserts that “ rights properly so-called are the 
creatures of law,^ and by “ l%w properly so-called,” he tells 
us that he means^the will^or command of a legislator .’’r 
To this assertion he adds the declaration that ‘ ‘ rights are 
established to insure the exercise of means and faculties. 
The right is the guarantee; the faculty is the thing guaran¬ 
teed.” It is therefore evident that Bentham makes an ex¬ 
clusive claim on the part of law and jurisprudence to the 
legitimate use of the word ‘ ‘ right ” as a substantive expres¬ 
sion. But is the claim well founded ? The primary mean¬ 
ing and use of the English word right and its French 
equivalent droit are adjectival; and both acquired an ethical 
signification* as expressing in the domain of morals a quality 
or characteristic which was the parallel or equivalent of that 
which they indicated in their original meaning of straight, 
when applied to material phenomena, long before they were 
appropriated by jurisprudence to denote a legal consequence 
created or recognized by positive law. It may be that juris¬ 
prudence has given to both words a much more definite and 
verifiable use as substantive expressions than that which 
they had acquired in the domain of morals, but it is beyond 
dispute that they were appropriated by jurisprudence on 

[213] 


38 Annai^s of thk Amkrican Academy. 

account of their ethical associations, as it also borrowed for 
its own use from the domain of morals the words duty and 
w7'ong. This common use of the same vocabulary by juris¬ 
prudence and ethics is explained by the fact so well stated 
by Chief Justice Holmes, of Massachusetts, when he tells us 
that ‘ ‘ law is the witness and external deposit of our moral 
life, ’ ’ and ‘ ‘ its history is the history of the moral develop¬ 
ment of the race.” Nor is it any wish to repudiate the his¬ 
torical relations of law and morals that induces Bentham and 
his disciples to protest against the use of the expression 
7 iatural rights in the discussion of political questions. 
Their quarrel with it is a purely verbal one and will be 
found, when closely examined, to resolve itself into a dis¬ 
pute as to the correct nomenclature to be used in the inves¬ 
tigation of the problems connected with the origin, nature 
and end of the state and its relations to the individual. 

An illustration of the verbal character of the controversy 
is supplied by Bentham in his criticism of the statement 
that the pursuit of happiness is a natural right. ‘ ‘ The 
pursuit of happiness,” he says, ” is certainly a natural incli¬ 
nation; but can it,” he asks, “be declared a right?” He 
then immediately answers his own question by replying that 
whether the inclination to pursue happiness can be declared 
a right or not ‘ ‘ depends on the way in which it is pursued. ’ ’ 
But before we can properly appreciate his answer it is neces¬ 
sary to know what he intends the pronoun it to stand for. 
Does he intend it to refer to the inclinatiori to pursue happi¬ 
ness, or simply to the noun happiness f If he intends it to 
refer to inclinatioji, as a strict observance of the rules of 
grammar would require, then both the question and the 
answer are perfectly useless to assist us in a solution of the 
matter in dispute, because the Virginian Declaration of 
Rights nor the American Declaration of Independence, 
which Bentham doubtless had in view, contains any state¬ 
ment that indicates that its authors identified natural rights 
with natural inclinations. On the other hand if the pronoun 

[214] 


Naturai, Rights. 


39 


it was intended to refer to the pursuit of happiness, then we 
must read the answer as meaning that whether the pursuit 
of happiness is a natural right or not depends on the man¬ 
ner in which the pursuit is conducted, and I do not believe 
that any rational advocate of the doctrine of natural rights 
would cavil at the answer in that form. But Bentham pro¬ 
ceeds to give an illustration of the pursuit of happiness 
which makes it clear that he used the pronoun it to repre¬ 
sent happiness^ and by doing that he undertakes to confute 
the proposition that happiness is a natural right, which, so 
far as I know, does not find a place in the Virginian Declara¬ 
tion of Rights, nor in the American Declaration of Indepen¬ 
dence, nor in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. 
“ The assassin,” says Bentham, “pursues his happiness, or 
what he esteems such, by committing assassination. Has 
he a right to do so ? If not, why declare that he has ?” It 
would be difficult to produce a more perfect example of con¬ 
troversial perversion of both the form and substance of an 
opponent’s proposition, while preserving an apparent adher¬ 
ence to the language in which it is stated. In none of the 
three documents which have been mentioned can the asser¬ 
tion be found that the individual has a right to pursue his 
happiness in any manner he chooses, and at the expense of 
the happiness or existence of every other individual whose 
existence may interfere with the particular manner chosen 
for the exercise of the right and its satisfaction. 

The right to pursue happiness is claimed in each of the 
documents for all men and in conjunction with an equally 
‘ ‘ inherent ” or “ inalienable ” or “ natural and sacred ’ ’ 
right to life, or the enjoyment of life, or security. The 
assassin, therefore, cannot deprive his intended victim of 
life without violating the ‘ ‘ natural ” or “ inherent ’ ’ right 
of the victim to life and security; and he cannot assert the 
inherence of a natural right in himself to violate all or any 
of the inherent or natural rights of another for the purpose 
of more perfectly securing or enjoying his own natural right 

[215] 


40 Annals of thf American Academy. 

to the pursuit of happiness without asserting that such 
natural right to violate the natural rights of another person 
is a right of a higher kind than any of the rights which 
may be violated in its name. But neither the Virginian 
nor the French Declaration of Rights, nor the American 
Declaration of Independence makes any mention of such a 
higher kind of natural right, and therefore the supporters 
of the doctrine of natural rights as it is proclaimed in those 
documents is not under any necessity to defend it against a 
charge of self-contradiction which cannot be supported 
until something is added to the doctrine which its authors 
never included in it. The addition which Bentham seeks to 
make to the doctrine, in his illustration of the assassin’s 
pursuit of happiness, is an assertion that every natural right 
is absolute in each individual. This addition to the doctrine 
converts it into a proclamation of anarchy; and among 
its opponents we find the late Professor Huxlej^ asserting 
that such is its true character because he regards it as a 
deduction or corollary from a prior doctrine of a “ Law of 
Nature” which justifies every individual to seek the satis¬ 
faction of all his natural desires without the recognition of 
any ethical restrictions. But this assertion cannot be sup¬ 
ported until the doctrine has been distorted by the gratuitous 
importation of a stultifying element which the advocates of 
the doctrine have alwa5^s repudiated. Whenever the declara¬ 
tion is made that all men are endowed by their Creator with 
inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi¬ 
ness, the declaration implicitly prohibits any exclusively 
egoistic assertion of them by any individual which would 
involve the violation of them in the person of another indi¬ 
vidual. If the jurist who represents the teachings of Ben¬ 
tham and Austin interjects that the prohibition remains 
without any positive and available sanction until one is pro¬ 
vided by the state, he is only reasserting the claims of posi¬ 
tive law and jurisprudence to the exclusive use of the w^ord 
right as a substantive expression; and I shall now make a 

[216] 


Natural Rights. 


41 


short attempt to ascertain the essential implications of the 
word right when used by law and jurisprudence in its sub¬ 
stantive form. 

The words rights wrong and duty^ whether employed to 
express ethical or jural concepts, derive their meanings 
from reference to a standard of conduct. When used by the 
jurist the standard of conduct to which they refer is one 
prescribed by positive law, and every positive law includes a 
sanction by which alone legal rights arise under it, because 
if the law did not include a sanction the alleged right would 
not be enforceable, and an unenforceable right is for the 
analytical jurist a combination of two contradictory words. 
But it is the prescribed standard of conduct, and not the 
sanction, which determines the nature, duration and scope 
of the right. Positive laws which prescribe absolute duties 
include or have a sanction attached to them, but they do not 
create rights, unless we ascribe rights to the State in connec¬ 
tion with them, and the root element of the sanction in¬ 
cluded in such laws is the arbitrary enforcement of the will 
of the more powerful. But the root element in the jural 
concept expressed by the word right, when it is used to 
designate a determinate right conferred upon an individual 
and enforceable by him with the aid of the State, is a restraint 
of the arbitrary enforcement of the will of the stronger 
individual who would pursue the accomplishment of his 
personal wishes to the detriment of the less powerful one; 
and the ideal of a positive law which creates determinate rights 
is found in a law which makes the weak and the strong equal 
in their power to enforce obedience to a standard of conduct 
prescribed for both. In other words, the supreme justifica¬ 
tion of every positive law which confers determinate rights 
upon individuals, when tested by the Benthamite standard 
of utility, is found in the fact that it provides a concrete 
sanction to enforce an ethical relation, and hence the vocab¬ 
ulary of ethics is inevitably employed to describe its results. 

Burke denies that government is made in virtue of natural 
[217] 


42 


Annai^s of the American Academy. 


rights, but admits that such rights “may and do exist in 
total independence of it; and exist,” he says, “in much 
greater clearness and in a much greater degree of perfection ; 
but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. ’ ’ He 
therefore does not pick any quarrel with the use of the 
phrase natural rights^ and he is careful to announce that he 
recognizes the existence of what he calls ‘ ‘ the real rights of 
men,” and that it is in their defence he assails the “ pre¬ 
tended rights ’ ’ which in his belief would totally destroy the 
‘ ‘ real rights. ’ ’ But when we come to examine his account 
of the rights which he describes as “ real,” we find that he 
uses language which by every rule of fair and reasonable 
construction concedes to every member of civil society a 
claim upon it to secure to him all the benefits which it can 
confer upon him, in the particular place in which he finds 
himself in it. His own words are: “If civil society is 
made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which 
it is made become his right. It is an institution of benefi¬ 
cence ; and law itself is only beneficence acting by rule. 
Men have a right to live by that rule ; they have a right to 
do justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows 
are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They 
have a right to the fruits of their industry ; and to the 
means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right 
to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and 
improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life and 
consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately 
do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do 
for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which 
society with all its combinations of skill and force can do in 
his favour.” This list of rights is surely as large and com¬ 
prehensive as the statement contained in the first paragraph 
of the Virginian Declaration, that men “have certain 
inherent rights of which when they enter into society they 
cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; 
namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty with the means 

[218] 




V - 




Naturai, Rights. 


43 


of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and 
obtaining happiness and safety.” The only difference” 
between the language employed by Burke and that used by 
the authors of the Virginian Declaration is that Burke 
alleges. that whenever civil society is established all the 
advantages for which it is made become the rights of its 
members, whereas the authors of the Virginian Declaration 
assert that man ente^ into civil society jdread}^ possessed ^of 
certain rights which civil society ought to recognize and 
protect. But the mutual relations of the individual and 
civil society become the same under both propositions, 
because the result in each case is that every member of civil 
society has a claim upon it to secure him in the possession 
and enjoyment of certain rights or benefits. But if every 
member of civil society has a claim upon it to secure him in 
the possession and enjoyment of those rights or benefits, 
whence does he derive it ? Burke himself uses language which 
seems to imply that he regards the claim as derived from some¬ 
thing very similar to the primitive contract which was alleged 
by Rousseau to be the basis of the political organization of 
human society, for he says “ men cannot enjoy the rights 
of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he 
may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining 
what it is in points the most essential to him. That he 
may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust 
of the whole of it.” And in his speech on Conciliation 
with America, he says, “All government, indeed, every 
human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every 
prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We 
balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit 
some rights that we may enjoy others, and we choose 
rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants. 
As we must give away some natural liberty to enjoy civil 
advantages; so we must sacrifice some civil liberties for the 
advantages to be derived from the communion and fellow¬ 
ship of a great empire.” But if the claim of the individual 

[219] 



44 Annals of the American Academy. 

upon civil society for the protection of his person and the 
security of the fruits of his industry, with all the other 
rights which Burke concedes to him and designates as ‘ ‘ the 
real rights of men,” is based upon a contract or convention 
by which civil society was established, then the citizen is 
absolved from allegiance and obedience to the State when it 
refuses to secure such ‘ ‘ real rights ’ ’ to him, or directly in¬ 
vades them for the uncovenanted advantage of other mem¬ 
bers of the community. This is the pure and unadulterated 
doctrine of the American Declaration of Independence, and 
if it does not find its authority in a contractual origin of 
civil society, its justification must be sought in the welfare 
of the citizen which is alleged to be at stake and which the 
doctrine is invoked to protect. But the welfare of the 
citizen is found in his possession of the ‘ ‘ real rights ’ ’ which 
Burke concedes to him, and which civil society, in the cir¬ 
cumstances supposed, has violated, and whether those rights 
are designated “real” or “natural” the appeal to them 
asserts their authority as morally prior and superior to that 
of the State. 

It may be contended that the “real rights” of Burke 
ought to be designated civil rights^ because it is only in some 
form of civil society that any person is found in possession 
of them. But if the individual is, in any circumstances, 
justified in resisting an attempt on the part of the State to 
deprive him of those rights he must in such circumstances 
find a designation for them which shall adequately describe 
their fundamental character as necessary data of civil society, 
rather than incidental advantages of it; and if the justifica¬ 
tion for his resistance cannot be found in a contractual origin 
of political society, it must be sought in the rational and 
moral nature of man by virtue of which political society 
exists. It is here that the veteran French philosopher, 
Renouvier, finds the source of the natural rights of man, 
and for that reason he designates them by the term rational 
in preference to the word natural, as being conditions of 

[220] 


Naturai, Rights. 


45 


well-being which the human reason demands for the devel¬ 
opment of the moral and intellectual capacities of man’s 
nature. 

Mr. Ritchie, in the preface to his book on “ Natural 
Rights, ’ ’ very truly tells us that he has approached the sub¬ 
ject in a spirit more appreciative and sympathetic than that 
in which either Bentham or Burke discussed it; and a re¬ 
perusal of the volume has confirmed my first opinion that it 
contains the materials of a perfect defence of the doctrine 
which it was written to confute. He tells us that the word 
natural is frequently used as the equivalent of normal, and 
that when so used it means “ what ought to be, but does not 
necessarily exist,” and he proceeds to say that, “if the 
term natural rights were always confessedly used in this 
sense, no objection could be taken to it, except that it was 
an ambiguous way of saying what might be less ambigu¬ 
ously expressed by a direct use of the term ought. ’ ’ But 
we cannot convert the word otight into an adjective and 
speak of ought rights; and if we select the adjective which 
in its daily use most directly implies the same meaning 
which the word “ ought ” used as an adjective would ex¬ 
press, and speak of moral rights, Mr. Ritchie replies that 
“ Natural rights are not identical with moral rights, because 
in many cases people have claimed that they have a moral 
right to do things that were not recognized either by the law 
of the land, or by prevalent public opinion, or by the con¬ 
science of the average individual” (p. 8o). On the next 
page (8i) of his book Mr. Ritchie says that if we could 
agree upon what rights every society ought at the very 
least to guarantee to its members, they would be our 
“ natural rights.” In making this statement he places the 
term “natural rights” in inverted commas, by which I 
suppose he intends it to be understood that even in that 
case the adjective natural could be properly used only 
as a provisional or adventitious expression. 

He then proceeds to inquire what determines the 
[221] 


46 AnnaIvS of thf Amkrican Academy. 

“ought,” and he concludes that it is “social utility” as 
disclosed by past history. In this connection it may be 
noted that in his previous discussion of the subject in his 
book on the “ Principles of State Interference,” Mr. Ritchie 
has been careful to remind us, that organized society is some¬ 
thing more than a simple aggregate or number of separate 
individuals and that “ the person is a product of the State.” 
Also in his book on “ Natural Rights ” he tells us that, 
“ Nature made man an animal; society has made him a 
rational animal—a thinking, intelligent being capable of 
moral action,” and that “ the person with rights and duties 
is the product of society, and the rights of the individual 
must, therefore, be judged from the point of view of society 
as a whole and not the society from the point of view of the 
individual.” All this may be admitted unreservedly, but it 
does not prove the existence of any ‘ ‘ social utility ’ ’ apart 
from the well being of the units composing a community; 
and not only is the person “ the product of the State,” but 
the supreme “ utility ” of the state is to produce “ persons,” 
that is ‘ ‘ thinking, ’ ’ intelligent beings capable of moral 
action.” But the “ thinking, intelligent being capable of 
moral action ’ ’ is such because he is capable of comprehend¬ 
ing moral distinctions; and if the end of the State is to 
enable men to live a truly human life, that is, the life of 
rational creatures whose conduct is regulated by moral dis¬ 
tinctions, the ultimate justification of its existence must be 
ethical, and, therefore, the political philosopher who dis¬ 
cusses the functions and ends of the State has an equal, if 
not a prior, claim to the jurist to use the vocabulary of 
ethics in the data of the problem he is examining. The use 
of the expression ‘ ‘ natural rights ’ ’ for this purpose has 
been well vindicated by Professor Green in his lectures on 
the “ Principles of Political Obligation ” (Works volume 2, 
page 339) where he says, “ There is a system of rights and 
obligations which should be maintained by law^ whether it 
is or not, and which may be called “ natural,” not in the 

[222] 


Natural Rights. 


47 


sense in which the term “natural” would imply that such 
a system ever did exist, or could exist, independently of 
force organized by society over individuals, but natural 
because necessary to the end which it is the vocation of 
human society to realize. ’ ^ Mr. Ritchie himself has told us 
that ‘ ‘ If there are certain mutual claims which cannot oe 
ignored without detriment to the well-being and, in the last 
resort, to the very being of a community, these claims may 
in an intelligible sense be called fundamental or natural 
rights. They represent the minimum of security and 
advantage which a community must guarantee to its mem¬ 
bers at the risk of going to pieces if it does not with some 
degree of efficiency maintain them” (page 87). If I 
rightl}'- comprehend the scope of these words they embody 
the same fundamental principle which is asserted in the 
third paragraph of the Virginian Declaration of Rights 
which states “That government is, or ought to be, instituted 
for the common benefit, protection and security of the 
people, nation or community; and that when a government 
shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a 
majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable 
and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such 
manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public 
weal.” The Virginian proposition is certainly stated in 
much wider terms than those in which Mr. Ritchie has 
expressed his conception of the fundamental relations of the 
individual and the State to one another; but the substance 
of each is that the justification of the existence and action 
of the State is the provision and maintenance of certain con¬ 
ditions of well being to all its members. The same doctrine 
is expressed with slight change of language in the American 
Declaration of Independence. The argument in both docu¬ 
ments is undoubtedly based upon the social contract theory 
of the eighteenth century, but the proposition that the 
utility and justification of the political organization of 
society are found in the protection of the individual in the 

[223] 


48 Annai^s of thf Amkrican Academy. 

possession and enjoyment of certain conditions of welfare 
which being, in the language of Green, “necessary to the 
end which it is the vocation of human society to realize ’ ’ 
may, therefore, be properly described as “ natural rights,” 
is independent of any theory of the historical origin of the 
State with which it may at any time have been associated, 
and is always separable from it. 

In view of many passages in Mr. Ritchie’s book it would 
seem that the verbal aspect of the controversy might be 
reduced to a choice between the words ‘ ‘ natural ’ ’ and 
“necessary.” But if the word “ necessary ” is admitted 
to be a legitimate description of the alleged rights, it will 
be difl&cult to justify the scorn and vehemence with which 
the use of the word ‘ ‘ natural ’ ’ has been condemned when 
applied to them. The words “ natural ” and “ necessary ” 
are not logically or etymologically identical, but they are 
nevertheless frequently used as if the}^' were so. Tor ex¬ 
ample, we frequently find such expressions as “natural 
consequence ’ ’ and ‘ ‘ necessary consequence ’ ’ used inter¬ 
changeably in exactly similar connections, and it cannot be 
disputed that many relations and results in the material 
universe and in the world of human activity may be correctly 
described as both “natural” and “ necessary.” It would 
therefore seem to be a perfectly defensible use of the word 
“natural” in connection with social relations to apply it 
to those conditions of human well being which are neces¬ 
sary to the permanence and efiiciency of human society. 

Both logically and historically civil society finds its founda¬ 
tion in the rational and moral nature and capacities of men, 
and the final test of its claim to exercise authority over the 
individual is ethical. For this reason neither law nor politics 
can avoid the use of the vocabulary of ethics; and the political 
philosopher may fairly claim to use the expression ' ‘ natural 
rights ’ ’ to designate that sphere of personal action which 
must be held inviolate from the coercive intrusion of any 
other individual or the State in order to permit every man 

[224] 


Nai^urai, Rights. 


49 


to live the most truly human life which his nature and his 
capacities make possible for him in the social environment 
in which he is found. The fact that the extent of this 
sphere of personal action has been, and may continue to be, 
the subject of an interminable controversy does not prove 
that such a sphere of personal action does not exist; and 
the advocate of the doctrine of natural rights may readily 
admit that its extent may vary in relation to the moral and 
intellectual development of the individual. The sphere of 
personal action which ought to be preserved for a child or to 
an adult with a defective mental equipment is not the same 
as that which ought to be maintained inviolate for the adult 
possessed of intellectual and moral capacities equal to those 
possessed by the bulk of the members of the same com¬ 
munity ; but in each case the natural rights of the individual 
are violated if the sphere of personal activity is restricted to 
a degree which prevents him attaining the standard of 
human excellence which otherwise he might reach. Finally, 
if I am asked to prescribe a test for any alleged condition of 
well being which may at any time be claimed by the mem¬ 
bers of a particular community as their natural right, I 
reply that the test is the necessity of such alleged natural 
right for the preservation and protection of the standard of 
well being to which the claimants have already attained, or 
for the attainment of any manifestly practicable increase of 
their well being which the alleged right would bring within 
their reach. Every such condition of well being may be 
properly designated a right because it ought to be possessed 
by the claimants, and it may be properly called natural in the 
sense that the evolution of human excellence for the con¬ 
tinuance of which the right is necessary may be declared to 
be natural to man; and it is when the alleged natural rights 
which are specified in the Virginian Declaration of Rights 
and in the American Declaration of Independence are 
regarded in this aspect of them that we find the justification 
of the words of Washington when he described the troops 

[225] 




50 Annals of thk Amfrican Academy. 

who had fought under his command for the independence 
of their country as men ‘ ‘ who had assisted in protecting 
the rights of human nature.” If human nature has not 
any natural or inherent rights which can claim recognition 
to restrain a preponderance of physical force or the arbitrary 
will of majorities, then the weak and all minorities are 
without verifiable authority or justification for resisting 
oppression. Might is the ultimate foundation and criterion 
of right and the highest political ideal men can safely 
cherish is the rule of the benevolent despot. Are we pre¬ 
pared to accept this conclusion as the final goal of all the 
efforts and struggles which humanity has made and endured 
to reach the best possible conditions of human well being? 
If not, we must continue to carry on the good fight under 
the old flag which was borne aloft by the men who stormed 
the citadels of despotism and privilege in the past and on 
which is written as the record of its history and the promise 
of its future service ‘ ‘ In hoc signo vinces. ’ ’ 

A. Inglis Clark. 


Hobart, Tasmania. 


